Lots of Gedo Senki newsJohnny : 20 Aug 2006
To make up for the lack of updating over the past few weeks, we're throwing everything into one tidy package.

- Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea) hit Japanese theaters on Saturday, July 29th. Madman Entertainment reports that, during the two-day frame of July 29-30, it topped the Japanese box office by grossing 905,335,600 yen from 435 screens. Toho, the film's distributor, expects the film to finish with a gross of about 10 billion yen.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series of novels that the movie is based on, posted a review of the film on her official web site. Among other impressions, she states that she was disappointed that direction of the movie ultimately fell under the watch of Goro Miyazaki and not his father, Hayao. She found the animation to be beautiful and exciting, but criticized what she perceived to be "cutting corners" in the process. After screening the film, she told Goro that ""It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie," indicating her satisfaction with the film itself but disappointment with the way the filmmakers made radical changes to the original source material, compromising the integrity of the novels. Full article here.

- Back in 2004, the Sci-Fi channel produced an "Earthsea" English language miniseries with a cast that included Shawn Ashmore, Kristin Kreuk, Isabella Rosselini and Danny Glover. Due to this (the network still retains the rights to the novels in the U.S.), Le Guin also speculates that Gedo Senki may not see a United States release until 2009, at the earliest. Boo hiss!

- Thanks to Ghibliworld.com for this heads-up: Gedo Senki will be shown at the Venice International Film Festival on Saturday, September 3rd at 4:45PM local time at the Sala Grande. Official VIFF site